Black Hole’s Breakfast at the Dawn of Time

Using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope astronomers have stared back in time and observed reservoirs of cool gas around early galaxies, a perfect larder allowing the growth of supermassive black holes.

Astronomers have spotted gas halos around the earliest galaxies — a food supply for supermassive black holes. These halos — seen as they were over 12.5 billion years ago — could explain how these cosmic monsters grew so rapidly during a period in the Universe’s history known as the Cosmic Dawn.